Sai Baba's teaching is 'universalistic' in that it
gives lip service to the need for various approaches to God and regards the essential
'human values as being shared by all good teachings and people, whatever their faith. This
is constructive, but is not such a 'progressive' idea, of course, for tolerance of
different faiths was widespread in India for ages and it has become more and more central
in Western values and law. Diversity of faiths is unavoidable, anyhow, in this world where
everyone is placed differently. The SB teaching as a whole is still overwhelmingly
Hindu-oriented in its cultural content, values and examples.

Sai Baba holds education very high on his agenda for
world change, especially moral and spiritual education. He repeatedly speaks out strongly
against any kind of intellectualism that is without adequate practical benefit. He
evidently dislikes academics and books and he constantly and firmly rejects various claims
and roles of the sciences. He attacks the sciences for not being able to tell us anything
of any inherent meaning that human life may have (as SB insists life has), and he tends to
treat the scientific enterprise as worthless except for providing material comforts. This
is certainly not supported by the evidence about science, which has removed countless
baseless superstitions - especially scripturally-based and other 'religions' ones - in the
fields of medicine, individual and group psychology, social life, biology, physics,
cosmology and so on and on. SB has also shown his understanding of much science to be
minimal and often mistaken, which is neither constructive nor progressive.

In his continually-repeated negative judgements of
the world and its leaders, SB virtually rejects and ignores much of what is best too, from
the human rights movement to the defence of workers' rights through strike action, from
the movement against casteism to the struggle for the even most elemental women's rights.
He does not publicly criticise any specific caste discriminations which still are a major
scourge in India, despite his teaching of non-discrimination due to colour, creed, caste
& religion. He often speaks favourably of the four-caste system (as it was in ancient
India at least), which tends strongly to support the basic religious ideas underpinning of
the present caste system too. While he supports all religions, but has not a word to say
about bestial Sharea law, as practiced in Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and so on... nor
does he take issue with the major Hindu-supported aberrations such as the thousands of
Hindu temple dancers who are prostituted, Brahmins who maintain very repressive 'caste
hygiene' (actually a kind of 'racial hygiene'). So, though he is not in favour of
discriminatory practices, his support of the Indian caste system in principle is not
followed up by an active or broad-based defence of the persecuted. This is just another
example of his Janus-faced approach to many dilemmas, to agree with both sides - the one
in word the other in practice. Interestingly, he has also often stated, "Sai says
'yes, yes, yes' to everything!

Again, though SB criticises India's leaders,
politicians and their corruption in hefty and sweeping terms, he clearly avoids directly
provoking specific interests. Instead, he actually praises the corrupt when they are in
power, and intervenes on their behalf through his followers in the judiciary when they
have been convicted (e.g. Narasimha Rao). His political policy is expressedly not
confrontation with vested powers and traditions, but rather in stimulating positive
changes. Meanwhile, his antipathy to human rights is evident, unfortunately, as he never
has a good word to say about them, only but criticises that movement on the grounds that
what people need to have is a better sense of their duties. This is truly black-and-white
reactionary talk, for human rights ought to go hand in hand with duties, and not be seen
as opposing values. Thus, he never speaks in support of the moderating influence that the
activities of the educated and intellectuals can have on social injustice, rigid
ideologies and rabid religious dogmas, nor of their analysis and criticisms that help to
uncover beliefs, policies and doctrines of all kinds - religious or secular - that can and
do wreak major psychological and social damage. In short, SB's traditionalism negates many
progressive egalitarian reforms arising from improved science and well-informed educated
people in the understanding of society, and the many benefits of democratic systems.

These omissions are reinforced by his complete
avoidance of mentioning the major and widespread social horrors in India, such as bonded
labour (i.e. lifelong unpaid, enforced slavery), child labour servitude, the selling of
children and women as slaves into prostitution (and almost certain AIDS infection), all of
which are practiced on a large scale in India, Pakistan and Nepal. Nor does SB speak in
public clearly against of the suppression of women, the widespread dispossessing and
discriminating against widows or the massive injustice of wives being burnt by husbands or
their families in supposed 'home accidents', usually merely for financial gain. All this
avoids confrontation with any oppressive and evil social systems in favour of placing the
burden on individuals to change themselves... of whom he most often says have no free will
whatever (but at other times says that they do have some).